How Archaeology Happens
by hoidn
Summary: Five times Walt thought about being married to Vic and one time he actually was.
1. 1

This is how archaeology happens: layer after layer of what happens, falling down and, after a time, covering each other up. —Gil Adamson, _Help Me, Jacques Cousteau_

 **A/N:** many thanks to ziparumpazoo for reading my endless babble and making me work that extra bit harder.

* * *

Walt hires Vic Moretti as much because he likes her as because of her qualifications. He likes her cockiness and swagger, her sarcasm and attitude, likes the compassion she hides and the intelligence she doesn't. There's something a little jagged about her, maybe even wounded, though she masks it well. Like draws to like and he recognises that something in her.

None of this is anything he puts into words during her interview that afternoon. It's all just there in a flash: intuition and years of observation and assessment honed to an unconscious instinct. His gut says yes, so he offers her the job.

It's only later, idly flicking through the paperwork he's somehow brought home, that he notices her emergency contact is her husband. That's a slight jolt, something his gut hadn't told him. She hadn't mentioned a husband, only said she'd moved from Philadelphia for personal reasons when he'd asked how she ended up in Wyoming. He's sure she hadn't been wearing a wedding ring.

The knowledge that she's married shifts his perception of her slightly, for no other reason than it's something he missed, and Walt isn't used to missing such significant details. He's forced to admit that Vic Moretti possesses more depths than he'd thought.

Now he wonders fleetingly about the kind of man her husband is. What does it take to share a life with a woman who wears her more-than-a-hint-of predatory danger the way some women wear pearls? One with such sharp teeth, who's as likely to snarl as smile? A certain strength, he imagines. A taste for exhilaration. Some shared wildness.

The thoughts exist in a flickering instant, dissolving almost as quickly as they form. Walt is a man who spends a lot of time purposely forgetting these days. He's something of an expert at it now.

Twilight is coming down the mountains, bringing with it a chill and the evening's hush. He tosses the paperwork at his feet, opens another beer, and stops thinking altogether.


	2. 2

**A/N:** i'm posting two sections at once because the first is so short and this one got ridiculously long so combined they sort of come to an equilibrium. zip says i should subtitle this 'five times that walt thought sean was a dickhead, and the one time he didn't really care'. it is A Theme.

* * *

The department's annual Christmas party would be a sad affair if family members and significant others weren't invited. Walt knows that. It doesn't mean he enjoys having to make the effort to talk to them. Twenty minutes in and he's already exhausted his tolerance for polite conversation.

His attention is split unevenly between a vague awareness of the party tables and a more keen surveillance of the Red Pony's swing doors. Several people have come in since he's been watching, but none are who he's looking for.

It's not like Vic to be late.

One of the many things he's learned about his newest deputy in the few months she's been working for him is that she's a consummate professional when it comes to things like procedure and punctuality. They're qualities Walt admires in general, though occasionally finds irritating on a personal level. Especially when she's expressing her dissatisfaction that he's failed to meet her exacting standards. At high volume and with great inventiveness.

Still, Vic hasn't experienced a Wyoming winter before, and though the weather's been comparatively mild for December, there are always potential hazards on the roads. An itch between his shoulder blades has been growing for the last ten uneasy minutes. Walt checks his watch again and decides to give her what's left of the half hour before he tries calling.

He tunes back in to the conversations around him just in time to hear Ferg say, "Hey, where's the mistletoe this year?"

The question is innocent, and thoughtless, and devastating.

Walt shoves back from the table and heads to the bar for his second beer, a stark silence in his wake. Catching Jess' eye and seeing her nod in return, he places his hands flat against the wooden countertop, trying to ignore the way his chest feels like a yawning, hollowed out crater.

The mistletoe was always Martha's bit of mischief.

Every year he'd ask her not to hang it and every year she'd promise faithfully that she wouldn't. Then there would come a point during the evening when he'd find himself standing under a sprig of the stuff that had appeared as if by magic. Martha would feign surprise and then proceed to kiss him very thoroughly in front of anyone who cared to look.

The ritual had always been a source of mild embarrassment for Walt, but right now he'd give anything for the chance to have her here to embarrass him like that just one more time.

Everybody seems to think that the milestones are the hardest: their anniversary, her birthday, his. But it's the small absences that can slice right through him and leave him bloodless and gasping. Martha is both everywhere and nowhere in the ordinary spaces of his days, and within that paradox stretches a minefield of grief waiting to explode.

Jess appears with his beer and a quick smile, yanking him back to the life and noise of the bar. Walt's just taken the first swallow when he hears Ruby's voice behind him.

"Here she is! Oh, Vic, you look lovely."

He turns, relieved and grateful for the distraction, then has to stop and do a swift internal recalibration. The woman Ruby's talking to is definitely Vic; there's no mistaking that. But it's a Vic who looks so unlike the one he knows that for a moment all he can do is stare.

Aside from the outfit she wore to her interview, he's only ever seen her in her work clothes. Tonight she's wearing a dress made of something that gleams with a warm luster as she moves. It's a dark, intense red, and against its rich color her skin looks as pale as fresh cream. Her hair, which he's only ever seen pulled back, frames her face and spills over her shoulders in a cloud of loose golden curls. Gone is his tough, brash deputy and in her place stands this woman made of soft curves and light.

'Lovely' is one hell of an understatement. She's dazzling.

Which is why Walt utterly fails to notice the man standing next to her until they're headed in his direction. A strange, unsettled feeling tightens his stomach.

"Hey," Vic says, coming to a stop in front of him with an overly bright smile.

The heels she's wearing add a few inches to her height and bring her closer to his eye level. He feels a mild sense of disorientation. "Vic."

She turns to the man next to her. "Walt, this is—"

"Sean Keegan," he interrupts, offering his hand. "I know I wasn't originally on the guest list tonight, but I just couldn't pass up the chance to finally meet the man who keeps stealing away my wife."

Walt sets down his beer and shakes the offered hand, taking in the false joviality, the bravado. There are undercurrents here he's not privy to. "Glad you could make it," he says before glancing at Vic.

She offers him a tight smile and then looks at her husband. In a voice pitched higher than he's used to hearing, she says, "Hon, let's get a drink and I'll introduce you to everyone else."

For the next hour, in between his own occasional and mercifully brief conversations, Walt watches Vic consistently steer Sean away from him. Something about her is altered tonight, beyond her changed appearance. In her husband's presence she becomes placating, conciliatory, somehow smaller. It's as if she's deliberately muting the vibrant force of her personality.

Sean, however, doesn't seem to think anything's amiss. He appears happily voluble, referring to Vic as "my wife" at every opportunity. Walt finds it grating. It reminds him of a dog feverishly marking its territory.

He's halfway through his third beer when Ruby sits down next to him.

"Well, he's certainly not what I was expecting."

Walt affects ignorance. "Who?"

"Vic's husband."

He makes a non-committal sound.

"Something's not quite right there. And she doesn't seem like herself tonight."

"I hadn't really noticed," he lies.

Ruby makes a thoughtful noise but doesn't say anything else. After a minute of silent observation she pats his arm before getting up and heading over to where her daughter and Cady sit with their heads together, laughing.

He hasn't heard Vic laugh even once tonight.

That thought is more sobering than Walt would like.

Eventually, Sean breaks away from his wife's supervision and wanders over. While Vic has been carrying the same glass of wine since they arrived, by Walt's count Sean has had at least four drinks. He stumbles against a chair before managing to sit.

"Walt!" he says, as though they're old friends reunited. "That's a name I hear a lot these days. Everything is 'Walt said this' and 'Walt thinks that' at our house." There's an ugly emotion behind the falsetto he adopts to mimic Vic. "My wife makes it sound as if you can just about walk on water."

Walt attempts to head off whatever's brewing with a diplomatic, "It's a small department. We all spend a lot of time together."

"Yeah, but, see, that's the thing." Sean leans forward conspiratorially. "She hardly talks about anybody else. Just you, _Walt._ That's pretty funny, right? My wife constantly talking about another man. Who she spends a shitload more time with than she spends with me. There are some guys who might have a problem with that, you know."

"But not you," Walt says wryly, as Sean's attention is caught by Vic's approach.

"My beautiful wife!" He beams beatifically. "We've just been having a little chat, me and your boss. Getting to know each other."

Her expression is equal parts embarrassment and irritation. "It's getting late. I think we should probably head home."

"It's not even 9.30!" Sean protests. "The party's just getting started. Besides," he adds, with a sidelong glance at Walt, "you're all dressed up and you don't want to waste all that effort just on me, do you?"

Vic clenches her jaw and holds out her hand. "Sean, c'mon."

He bats it away as he stands up, moving to pass her. "I'm not a child, Victoria."

"So stop acting like one," she snaps in a deadly undertone.

A look passes between them that Walt can't read, then Sean mutters something and walks off. Vic is still for a moment, watching him, before she turns back with a sigh. "Sorry."

Walt shakes his head. "Don't worry about it."

"He doesn't usually drink this much."

"Vic. It's okay."

This time her smile is genuine, the first one he's seen on her all evening. She transforms again into the woman he's spent the last few months getting to know.

He likes that woman. He's glad to have her back.

"So I should—" She gestures to where Sean stands by the bar looking petulant.

Walt salutes her with his beer. "Good luck."

"Thanks," she says with a roll of her eyes.

Watching her walk away, he thinks about how odd it is to hear someone call her _Victoria_. He's so used to the hard punch of _Vic_. Its single syllable, fast and direct as a bullet, suits her. Though perhaps the elegance of _Victoria_ suits her just as well. Perhaps _Victoria_ is someone only known to a select few. Walt feels a kernel of envy sneak under his ribs. He'd like to be one of those people.

Ruby was right. Sean is nothing like the man Walt expected Vic's husband to be. He's weak. And like all weak men he thinks he needs to dominate in order to be strong. He's afraid of losing hold of his wife and so he turns to posturing and casting blame. It's a cycle Walt's witnessed too many times to believe it can end well, but he hopes for Vic's sake that this time he's wrong.

Part of him would like to take Sean aside and explain a few things, but no man wants marital advice from someone he regards as a threat, no matter how misguided that fear is. Still, Walt doesn't like seeing Vic unhappy. And while she and Martha don't seem to have much in common at first glance, he knows a thing or two about being married to a woman whose strength matches or exceeds his own. Martha was no less a force than Vic for all that she was a quieter, more restrained one.

He has a momentary flash of amusement at the idea of the two of them butting heads. Then grief bears down on him as he remembers the reason why it's impossible. Grief and that strange, unsettled feeling from before.

Fortunately, he knows where to find solace.

Beer number four is something of a tipping point. He's not drunk by any means, but his thoughts take on a little more buoyancy and his surroundings have acquired a pleasant fuzziness. People wander in and out of his awareness; sometimes they talk to him, sometimes not. Oddly enough, Vic alone remains sharp and clear in his perception.

At a table across from him, she and Sean are engaged in a quiet but heated exchange. Walt watches as Sean gets up abruptly and stalks in the direction of the restrooms on unsteady legs. Vic takes a deep breath and seems to deflate as she lets it out. It occurs to him to wonder who she has to talk to in Wyoming aside from her husband. All the rest of her family and friends are back in Philadelphia. He feels a gentle swoop of sorrow at the thought she might be lonely.

Walt considers briefly that he should probably mind his own business. But he hasn't really gotten the chance to talk to her all night and he wants to. It surprises him how much he wants to.

"Hey," he says, sitting down next to her.

"Hey."

"Everything okay?"

"Oh, just peachy." Her tone is acidic enough to strip paint.

He studies her for a few moments, weighing the potential for awkwardness against the disquiet he feels at seeing her like this. "Want to talk about it?"

Vic looks at him with wide, startled eyes. There's real pain there, and vulnerability. Walt has the sudden desire to put his arms around her, comfort her. The strength of it shocks him.

Just as suddenly, Vic's expression reshapes itself into a more familiar anger. "We had a fight, I mean before we even left the house. Since we moved here he's always sniping at me about how much time I spend at work. He never had an issue with the job in Philly. I don't know what the fuck his problem is now. And tonight—" She breaks off with an agitated motion of her hands. "He wasn't even supposed to be back for two more days! But he shows up to "surprise" me and gets pissed because I won't blow off the party to stay home with him. Then when he decides to come along and acts like a dick all night, somehow that's my fault, too."

It all comes out in a rush, like built-up pressure escaping from a newly opened valve. Vic bites her lip and studies her unvarnished nails. For the first time Walt notices she's wearing her wedding ring. The gold band looks out of place on her hand.

"Anyway." She shrugs. "It's fine, no big deal. I just wish he'd picked a different night to make me feel like shit."

Her teeth have left shallow indents in her bottom lip. With her glossy red lipstick chewed off, they're easy to see.

The thought floats through his mind that kissing Victoria Moretti would not be a hardship.

He blinks, dismayed. Where the hell had that come from? Maybe he's a little more drunk than he thought.

"Well," he begins, with no idea what follows. He tries to think of some sage advice to offer on the vagaries of marriage and the things we endure for the people we love, but his brain keeps tripping over the idea of kissing. And he discovers that he's definitely more drunk than he thought because what comes out of his mouth is, "At least there's no mistletoe."

For a few seconds Vic just looks at him as though he's lost his mind. Then she bursts into bright, glorious laughter.

The room seems to light up around her.

It's a revelatory incandescence. In that instant Walt understands how Dorothy must have felt when she opened her black and white door in Kansas to find a land of riotous color stretching before her on the other side.

But he carries too many years and scars to not be afraid of all that promise. So he takes a single long look at what could be and then he gently shuts the door.


	3. 3

**A/N:** this one is part of my 'conversations they should've had' series. there are a few lines that i've repurposed/rephrased from the show.

* * *

Walt wakes up, disoriented, with his back against the headboard and a crick in his neck. He hadn't meant to fall asleep.

The silence of the cabin offers no clue as to what woke him. A glance at his watch tells him his nap lasted for about two hours. Vic must be asleep herself by now.

He gets up, wincing at the twinges in his stiff muscles, and eases open the bedroom door to check on her. It takes him a single sweeping instant to absorb the scene.

The lamp is on.

The front door is open.

The room is empty.

His heart slams hard against his ribs and stunning, icy fear ricochets in his gut. His head is a whirl of _he found her he took her she's gone._

It's an eternity in two long strides before he sees Vic sitting on the top step of the porch, her arms wrapped around her knees.

Walt's relief is so sudden and so powerful it makes his head swim. He has to bend and brace his hands on his thighs, forcing himself to take even breaths as he stares at his feet.

Safe. She's safe. She's here.

He stands up straight and runs his hands over his face. Outside, in the distance, a silent electrical storm rages.

Vic turns her head when he opens the screen door as if she's been expecting him. "Hey. Did I wake you?"

"Nope." He sits down next to her and watches the sky light up. "Couldn't sleep?"

She shakes her head. "The lightning was so bright I kept thinking it was headlights. Eventually I figured I'd just get up and come out here until it was over."

Walt nods his understanding and for a while they sit and watch the storm together. Despite its far off violence, the sky overhead is clear and the air is calm. As a metaphor, or even augury, it seems to offer hope.

Vic stirs beside him, speaking quietly into the darkness. "I'm sorry about making things weird for you with Lizzie."

He turns his head to see her. Strands of her hair are glowing in the light that shines from inside the cabin; they're the same electric color that fills the sky. Though it's only the second time Vic's been to his place, her presence next to him feels comfortable and familiar, more than welcome. The truth he can't admit to is that he'd rather be sitting here with her than doing anything with Lizzie Ambrose.

"You didn't."

Vic offers him a small, sad smile and then looks away. "I know it's not really my business, but... I don't want to wreck anything for you by being here."

Walt hears the rustle of wild grass nearby and then a cut-off squeak as some small unlucky creature becomes a meal for something larger. Probably an owl, he thinks. From time to time he comes across the oval pellets of skin and bone that signify their kills.

Like spent shells.

"Don't worry about that," he says. "Stay here as long as you need. What's important is keeping you safe."

She bites her bottom lip for a few seconds before saying, "Okay."

The silence between them grows heavy.

He knows Vic. He knows there's more to why she came to Wyoming, more truth to be unraveled. It's a thread he doesn't want to tug both for her sake and his own, but there's no way around the ugly necessity. He can't protect her if he doesn't have all of the facts.

"It was more than just bullet casings with Gorski, wasn't it?" he finally asks.

Her shoulders stiffen and still. She answers him with a slow, deep breath.

"What else happened?" he presses softly.

It takes her some time to answer, but Walt is a patient man.

Drawing her arms in against her chest, Vic keeps her eyes fixed on the storm. "When the other cops at my precinct found out I'd ratted to IAB, they treated me like I had a disease. Even my friends acted like I was contagious. But it got a lot worse after Bobby killed himself. Little things started happening, like my paperwork going missing. It was minor stuff, but it all built up and after a while I was rattled."

"Understandable."

"Then I started running into Ed a lot when I was off duty. He was always friendly, smiling, and I tried to tell myself I was being paranoid. But there was something about the way he looked at me. And he would make these comments that were... I don't know. It wasn't so much what he said as how he said it. He wanted to scare me. He wanted me to know he was coming for me."

Her voice shakes the way it had in the sunlight of his office. Now, in the dark, she sounds even more lost. Compassion tears at him, a spasm deep within his chest.

"Take your time," he tells her.

Vic clears her throat. "That's when the bullet casings began showing up. Then our house was broken into. There was no sign of a robbery, but one of my uniforms was laid out on the bed all cut up, like somebody just hacked at it with a pair of shears. So we had the locks changed and the alarm system upgraded. A couple of my brothers would drive past the house in their patrol cars at random times. But there was another break-in about a month later. That time, um..."

Her voice doesn't trail off so much as it seems to refuse her intent to go on. In its wake, the still air grumbles with a sound pitched almost too low to hear as the mountains echo the storm back to itself.

A shiver runs through Vic as though the thunder resounds inside her, lending her its voice. She licks her lips. "Uh, some of my underwear went missing. I'm pretty sure Ed took it."

Anger and nausea rise in Walt's throat in equal measure. He swallows them down until he's sure his voice won't betray him. "You reported all of this?"

"I went to my LT after the first break-in but there was really nothing he could do. I had no proof. I was never going to have proof and we all knew it. Then Sean's car was broken into." She lets out a sardonic huff of a laugh. "It's so weird, but I remember it was a Tuesday. He found a bunch of lilies on the driver's seat and there was a card with them. It said 'With deepest sympathies for your loss.'"

He feels a powerful stab of the deep, visceral horror he imagines Sean must have experienced. Something else clicks into place. "So those flowers Bob delivered to the office..."

"That was Ed."

"And 'happy anniversary'?"

"Bobby's suicide. Two years." Her voice is flat, unnerving. "He got it wrong, though. Flowers are for your fourth anniversary. Second is cotton. Or maybe paper. I forget."

An immense distance has sprung up between them and Walt has to curl his hands into fists against the desire to reach for her across it. "Why didn't you tell me then?" he asks, trying to bring her back.

"I don't know. I wanted to, but... I'd already spent so long not telling you. And I was scared. I was so scared, Walt. Talking about it would've just brought it all back. I don't want to go back there again," she whispers.

Her breathing is rapid and shallow, and he can see how hard her fingers are digging into the skin of her arm.

"I know," he says, because he's lived that kind of pain. But Gorski isn't giving her a choice. The whole picture has finally become clear. "It's not just about his partner, is it, Vic? This is about you. His obsession with you." When she doesn't respond, Walt forces himself to say, "I need to know, did you two have some kind of... romantic relationship? Or is it all in his imagination?"

She curls in tighter on herself and rests her head on her knees. "It was a long time before Bobby, before I was even in Homicide. It only lasted a few months. I was young and it was like this fun, secret game we were playing. Only the more dangerous it got, the more he liked it, and the more I didn't. Then I found out he was married. So I ended it."

"Did he hurt you?" Walt can barely get the question out.

After a moment of hesitation she says, "No."

Then, "Not exactly."

He waits. He's not sure what might come out of his mouth if he opens it now.

Vic closes her eyes. When she finally begins to speak, her voice is hollow, resigned. "Ed liked games, liked to play mind games. The last time we... were together, he got me cuffed to the bed and left. Pretended to leave," she amends, her right hand absently rubbing at her left wrist. "I thought he'd really gone. He let me think that. I had never felt so terrified and so helpless in my life. I was naked. I couldn't get to my phone. No one knew where I was. It was only fifteen or twenty minutes but I swear to god it felt like hours."

"Then he let you go?" _Please, god, don't let it be anything else._

"He uncuffed me." She lifts her head and meets his eyes. "But I don't think he ever let me go."

Walt's heart simply fractures.

He wants to crush her to him and shield her from ever being harmed. He wants to find Ed Gorski and beat him until some of this rage is washed away by blood.

Vic sits up and tucks some wayward hair behind her ear. "I've never told anyone about that before," she says with the barest of smiles.

"Sean doesn't know?"

"He knows Ed and I were involved and I broke it off. He doesn't know the details."

Even so, he wonders, how can a man leave his wife — leave Vic — so often alone? Sean knows the rest of what she's been through, must know that she carries those memories and that fear. He knows she's been threatened and terrorized; he knows the sadistic measures that Gorski is capable of. And yet he's away as often as he's at home, leaving her without any kind of support.

A wistful, inchoate longing gathers in Walt's chest. She deserves so much more.

With a sigh, she stretches her legs out until her pointed toes dangle between the bottom two steps. Ahead of them, the storm is winding down now, with only the occasional flicker streaking across the sky.

"I just need this to be over," Vic says. "I'm so goddamn tired of being afraid."

He thinks of how pale and drawn she'd looked this morning and wonders how long it's been since she's had more than a few hours rest.

"You should try to get some sleep," he says at last.

"So should you."

He tips his head in acknowledgement. "I'd feel better if you take the bed."

One of her eyes catches the light like a spark when she turns her head. Walt's expecting her to argue but after a long, searching look, Vic simply nods.

With a last glance at the waning storm, she rises.

Despite her bare feet and sweats, the taut lines of her face, there's something almost regal about her now. A snippet of Tennyson unfolds from memory, _Though much is taken, much abides._ He's thinking of it as they make their way inside.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you everything before," Vic says as he closes and locks the door.

 _One equal temper of heroic hearts._

He turns to face her.

"Thank you for telling me now."

* * *

 **note:** the Tennyson passage walt references is from Ulysses: 'Though much is taken, much abides; and though / We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, / One equal temper of heroic hearts. / Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'


	4. 4

**A/N:** thank you to everyone who's left comments on this here thing. i'm struggling at the moment and haven't been able to reply, but i do appreciate you taking the time.

* * *

False dawn light is staining the sky by the time he convinces Vic to go to the hospital. She'd refused to leave Chance's compound until he did, so in the end Walt drives her himself. He is privately, selfishly glad for every minute of her presence and the tangible proof she's alive.

They arrive at Durant Regional to find that Ferg has already recorded Sean's statement and photographed his injuries for the file. Sean himself has been released and gone home.

Walt's taken aback by the news but Vic receives it with the same eerie calm she's shown all night. She even submits to an examination of her wounds and a CT scan without complaint. The first tear in her composure doesn't come until Doc Weston suggests that one of the female nurses be assigned to take her evidence photos.

"No," she says in a panicked voice. Walt feels his stomach lurch at the fear in her eyes when she looks at him. "Can't you do it?"

There's no reason why not. While it's a task he usually delegates, photographing a victim's injuries is certainly within the scope of his duties as sheriff. He's done it many times.

But this is Vic.

In those first moments after she'd driven back, when she slid, stumbling, from the Bronco, Walt had wanted to sink to his knees and press his face against her stomach, to take in deep lungfuls of her stale sweat-and-copper smell. He'd been so fervently, recklessly grateful.

Now it's hours later and he's no less grateful, but that overwhelming fever of relief has cooled and he's once again conscious of what they are — and are not — to each other.

Vic is his deputy. Vic is another man's wife.

"Sheriff?" Doc Weston prompts.

Walt glances at him and then back at Vic.

He's not sure he's strong enough for this.

"If that's what you want."

He leaves her to undress in privacy and takes his time finding Ferg and the camera. When he returns to the exam room, he knocks twice before slowly opening the door. Vic is sitting on the edge of the exam table with her arms wrapped around herself. She's removed everything except her underwear and bra.

What he can see of her pale skin is covered in bruises. The raw wounds on her wrist stand out starkly in the florescent light.

It takes a few seconds to gather himself before he trusts his voice.

"Ready?"

She nods and stands up, holding herself with a brittle poise that makes him feel as though his own bones are splintered.

As quickly and impersonally as he can, he begins documenting her injuries.

They don't speak. Vic hardly even seems to be breathing. The room has taken on a greenish hue and the noise of the world on the other side of the door is muted. Walt has the sense of being underwater, that he's moving through an atmosphere more dense than air. The camera feels heavy in his hands and his flesh feels heavy in his skin. They could be standing on the silty bottom of a pond, with its strangely distorted sound, and its filtered and diffuse light. The hush they inhabit feels church-like, funereal. Time seems to be slowing.

Each photograph he takes is narrow in focus: one bruise, one cut. These isolated glimpses seem less of a violation than if he were looking at Vic as a whole. So he works like a cartographer mapping sections of an unknown landscape. The jutting crescent of her hip and the strong muscles of her thigh, the supple dip and flare of her waist and the shallow inlets between her ribs: these are islands in the archipelago of her body. He describes them one at a time.

When he reaches the red welt bisecting her windpipe, Walt feels his own throat close.

"He choked you?"

"Not Chance. One of the others," Vic answers flatly, as if she's reciting from a report.

No, he thinks, even then her voice has more expression than that.

Her face is equally blank when he straightens. It's not until she meets his eyes that he sees the great effort she's making not to crumble; he sees the struggle between shame and a despairing kind of pride. She has the look of the weary victor after a relentless battle, still standing though the decimation of her army is only marginally less complete than her foe's.

"Okay," he tells her when he's done.

She lets out a shaky breath and nods. Some of the rigidity in her posture softens.

"The nurse left you some clean scrubs to change into if you want."

"No thanks," Vic says and begins to pull on her stained clothes.

"Do you want me to, uh..." He motions to the door.

A flash of alarm crosses her face, quickly suppressed. "No."

Walt nods and feigns interest in a sign detailing proper hand washing technique.

The need to offer her comfort is a yearning in his muscles like the cramp of a phantom limb. It used to be that his domain was the opposite of violence — if not mending then making amends — but right now he doesn't even know how he'd begin.

Sean's injuries had been less extensive and severe than Vic's. Chance and his confederates hurt her more because she fought them; they'd punished her for her own defense. Walt wonders how many of them it had taken to subdue her.

He thinks of Gorski's scorn at Sean's lack of action. _Mr Milquetoast,_ he'd called him. Walt had meant what he'd said to Gorski. Not everybody can be a cop. Most people are far better off if they submit without a struggle when confronted with violence.

And yet he can't help the caustic trickle of thought that plagues him. Had he been the one on the road with Vic things would have turned out differently. While he's never liked Sean or the way he treats Vic, Walt has always respected the fact that the man is her husband. Now though, he's seized by an unwilling but fierce contempt.

Walt is angry.

He's angry that Vic is here with serious head trauma and her husband has gone home without even knowing how she is. He's angry that Sean's careless actions are what put her in danger in the first place.

It's a swift, wild, bodily anger. It burns across his face and down his chest like the hot blast from an open oven.

"Walt?"

Vic's quiet voice is a splash of cool water on his skin.

He looks up to find her fully dressed. Like a visitation, she's surrounded by a nimbus of coruscating light. For a dizzying moment she's Victoria, patron saint of the imprisoned, just as worthy of being immortalized in mosaic at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo as her namesake.

"Are you all right?" she asks.

Walt blinks and the vision scatters. Sunlight leaks through the closed blinds of the window behind her.

"Yeah," he says. "Let's get you home."

"What about your arm?"

"It's fine."

"You need stitches."

"I'll come back and get them after I take you home."

She looks at him with those haunted eyes that make him wish he'd shot to kill Chance Gilbert. "No you won't."

"Vic, you need to rest."

"So I'll rest while your arm is stitched up."

The shadow of her customary stubbornness eases a fraction of the worry Walt's been carrying. He nods as he opens the exam room door. "All right."

...

When it's all over, he drives to the station with no particular purpose in mind, just reluctant, for some reason, to go home.

Ruby frowns when he walks in.

"Walter, why are you here? You should be resting."

"I'm fine, Ruby."

Lips pursed in disapproval, she shakes her head but says nothing further. Walt takes a moment to wonder why the women in his life seem intent on chastising him like he's a little boy.

After a desultory check-in with Ferg, he wanders into his office and shuts the door. Everything in the room is as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror and yet all of it seems strange. His head feels cottony and muffled, as though the world exists at a distant remove through warped and thickened glass. He sits at his desk and leans forward on his elbows, letting them take his weight. The stitches in his arm tug whenever he moves, like nudges to his memory.

He sees Vic every time he closes his gritty eyes.

For the last thirty-six hours she's been his cynosure, the single reason for all his striving. But she's at home now, safe, and Walt feels a vague but pervasive sense of loss. It's like waking from a dream that first bloomed as a nightmare. And though its thorns smoothed their way to something softer, there's still a lingering unease pulsing through all four chambers of his beating heart.

He hadn't wanted to let her go.

But he'd taken her home, to be with her husband. To be with Sean. Who'd left the hospital without seeing her. Who hadn't mustered up enough consideration for his wife to even call.

A whisper slithers under Walt's breastbone, the devil in the cage of his ribs. _If it was me..._

He pushes it away, literally pushes himself violently away from the desk and strides to the window, as though physical distance can separate him from the betrayal of his thoughts. He stares unseeing out at the center of Durant, sickened by himself.

Shame coats his insides and beats a current through his veins. He feels monstrous.

Vic is not his wife.

 _Think of Martha,_ Walt orders himself. _Think of Denver._

Don't think of Vic crying as he held her; don't think of her asking him to stay. Don't think of her face as Ed drove them to safety. Don't think about why she came back.

Don't think about it.

 _Don't._

* * *

 **note:** there's actually no patron saint of the imprisoned (or prisoners or hostages), at least not that i can find. there are several saints named victoria, but none of them are patron saints of anything. the one i've referenced was a roman noblewoman who refused an arranged marriage, was imprisoned (by the dude), and was ultimately released; i thought she sounded like a pretty good parallel for vic. (apart from her being a virgin and eventually martyred by the sword, that is. you can't have everything.)


	5. 5

**A/N:** a sincere thank you to everyone who's left a comment on this here thing. honestly, if i'd known how gruelling writing it would be, i probably wouldn't have begun, so extra special thanks go to the inestimable ziparumpazoo, who's had to read three versions of this particular section and never fails to help.

* * *

A horse kicked him once when he was a boy. It had been a hard, hind-leg kick to his solar plexus that folded him in half and hurled him backwards into the dirt. In the endless seconds before he was swallowed by the hot agony of the blow, the world had been nothing but silence, and he'd lain paralyzed in that silence, curled on his side like a question mark, suffocating.

The memory is alive in Walt as he stares at Travis, mouth open, with an engagement ring and something like an ultimatum on the desk between them.

 _Either you give it to her or I will._

He can't breathe.

The word _suffocation_ comes originally from the Latin _suffocat-_ , meaning _stifled_ , which in turn comes from the verb _suffocare_ , derived from _sub-_ , meaning _below_ , and _fauces_ , meaning _throat._

"Did you know she was pregnant?" Travis demands.

 _Her and this baby._

Walt closes the ring box and slides it back across the desk. "It's really none of my business."

To suffocate is to be stifled below the throat.

Travis makes a frustrated sound. "Do you even care?"

Below the throat sit the lungs.

"When Vic wants me to know, she'll tell me."

Below the throat sits the heart.

"So it doesn't matter to you that she's out there getting kicked in the stomach and delivering search warrants when she's supposed to be having an ultrasound?"

 _Restrain_ is another synonym for _stifle._ Appropriate irony for a man who's always prided himself on his restraint.

There's a fist in Walt's gut with a stranglehold on his viscera. "She knows how to do her job. She knows how to ask for help if she needs it."

Travis flings his arms wide. "She doesn't know what she needs!"

The explosion fizzles quickly, like a damp ignition fuse, but it jolts Walt fully into the moment.

All at once he's reminded of Sean.

Standing on the other side of the desk, Travis seems less like a man than a child radiating impotent defiance, a sulky toddler who's not getting his own way. The performance feels keenly familiar. Like Travis, Sean had tried to exercise petty measures of control over Vic. Like Sean, Travis will be the architect of his own disappointment.

Walt gets to his feet slowly. Whatever he says now will go unheeded, he knows, but for Vic's sake he has to try.

"It doesn't matter what I think, or what you think, Travis. Vic is an adult. She's entitled to make her own choices, and we have to respect them."

Travis bristles as though the words are some sort of challenge. "All I know is that she's not taking care of herself right and somebody's got to do something about it before she gets herself and the baby hurt."

Walt thinks of muscling a stranger's car off the road in a blind rage to get to Malachi, and of Vic holding back his bulk with her own body. He always forgets how much smaller than him she is. Strong and tough and with a presence that fills the room, but physically smaller, very nearly delicate.

Even so, she doesn't need anyone to take care of her; she wouldn't let anyone who tried. But someone to watch her back, the way she's always watched his, that's something she needs. That's something Walt hasn't done very well for far too long.

"It's not your place to decide how Vic should live her life. Just like it wasn't your place to tell me about her being pregnant." He holds up one hand when Travis opens his mouth to interrupt. "You had no right to do that."

Travis shifts back and forth on his feet, jaw working. His resentment is almost palpable as he goes on the attack. "So you're not gonna do anything? You're just gonna let her keep risking herself and the baby?"

"What I'm going to do is respect her right to make her own decisions," Walt says firmly, refusing to be baited. "And I suggest you do the same." He walks over to the door and holds it open. "Go home, Travis."

Snatching up the ring box, Travis strides out with a sullen look on his face. His heavy, booted footfalls echo loudly down the stairs until a final slam and clatter fades into silence.

The low flame of anger that had briefly sustained Walt flickers out and leaves him cold. He sinks down into his chair, the demand of gravity feeling stronger than it did a few minutes ago.

All around him the office, the building, is still and serene; he'd been about to go home when Travis arrived. Now he studies the room and its shadows, trying to recall how it had looked before Victoria Moretti strode in and filled up the space, before she remade it just by being here.

He can't.

The clanking rattle of a car with a broken muffler blunders through the quiet. Walt gets up and walks to the window, presses his palm to the cool glass. A gibbous moon hangs low in the sky, just visible above the trees in the square. They stand motionless in the absence of wind. Scattered across the darkness overhead burn the tiny fires of millions of far-flung suns. Their immense distances reduce the massive bodies to flecks of shattered glass on asphalt. Just bits of broken, useless things.

 _You just want me to let you crash and burn? Save myself?_

Walt turns from the window as memory pierces him with a sharp, sweet pain.

Vic had been what steadied him after Sawyer's talk of suspension. Her voice had lead him from the tangled wilderness where he'd been lost and into mid-morning sunlight that poured over them like honey. Her eyes had been so earnest and clear. Her faith in him had been so certain, so unsullied, in spite of everything.

 _Even if you were guilty... I couldn't do that._

He'd thought it meant she still loved him.

Now his chest feels cavernous and it hurts to breathe, to swallow. Clarity slices through him with all its brilliant cutting edges, unerring as a knife between two ribs. _Why would she,_ asks a vicious part of himself, _when you threw her love back in her face like a self-righteous prick?_

Wisdom is a bitter harvest to reap.

Walt takes the bottle of Lagavulin from his bottom drawer and sets it on the desk. The night he'd walked out of his office, bottle in hand, hoping to talk to her, to really talk — she must have been pregnant then. The signs are so obvious now: her illness, the tea that's replaced coffee in her mug, the wistfulness in her voice when she'd asked him about living a safe, simple life. He'd just been too self-absorbed to see how the pieces fit together.

Leaning back in his chair, he studies the way the darkened windows reflect the glow of the lights hanging from the ceiling. They seem suspended in mid-air, amorphous golden blobs in a sea of black. From here they cloak the view beyond the glass. From here it appears that nothing else exists.

It's such a simple deception, this literal trick of the light, but it awakens in him a sudden and painful understanding. For months he's been dwelling in a room just like this one, surrounded by windows showing him only his own reflection. He's accepted it as all there was to see and never bothered to look farther.

The depth of his own arrogance is breathtaking.

All these months he's been presuming the wrong mythology. Orpheus and Eurydice is not their metaphor. It's Echo and Narcissus.

Walt pours himself two fingers of scotch and returns the bottle to its drawer. His throat aches. The glass warms as he holds it between his palms, studying the way light glints and refracts from its surface. The scotch itself is tawny, the same yellow-brown of Vic's eyes on evenings when nothing much is happening and she sprawls in the chair across from him with her booted feet propped on his desk. Those evenings when she used to.

Almost since the day she came to work for him, Vic has been his most unwavering support. His constant amidst chaos. And what has he done but take her for granted and push her away? What has he ever done but demand more and offer less?

He's never imagined himself capable of the kind of jealousy that roared to life the moment Eamonn O'Neill rolled into the room with Vic's coffee mug in hand. At times it seemed to erupt across his skin like electricity, as though with the slightest contact he'd give off sparks. Brutal and huge, it took up all the space inside him until it was compressing his organs and straining at the bones of his skull.

Vic had betrayed their tacit understanding. That's what Walt told himself at the time. The one that said she would wait as long as he needed; the one that said she was his. Never mind how unfair it was to her; never mind how unbelievably selfish it was of him. That's how he'd justified his anger and resentment. That's how he'd justified everything.

So when she'd called him on his behavior, the way she always used to, the way she doesn't anymore, he responded with indifference. He hurt her knowingly, callously, and with a kind of bitter triumph.

Because he really is that much of an asshole.

But instead of backing down, she'd come at him with all the wild courage inside her.

 _Whether you like it or not, your life, it impacts mine._

She'd tried to make him see and he'd refused. She'd walked away and he had let her go.

It was easy enough later on to pretend that the ashes he tasted were only the remains of a burned-out car. It was easy enough to pretend he could wash them away in another woman's mouth.

Here in the hot white glare of hindsight Walt feels flushed and clammy with shame.

He sets his glass down on the desk and gets up, possessed by a restless need to _do_ something. It spurs him through his inner door and along the short, dim hallway, until he finds the urgent sense of purpose stalling out beside Vic's desk.

How many times, he wonders, has he stood in just this spot? How many hundreds of times?

Something glints from the stack of manila folders in front of him and he reaches out to free a long blonde strand of hair. For years he's been finding them stuck to his coat, drifting through the Bronco, caught between papers on his desk, like little banners proclaiming _Vic was here_. This one is almost the length of his arm; they'd been shorter when she first arrived. Even then he'd been glad to see them, these silent, friendly reminders of her presence all through his life.

Walt's gaze wanders over the few personal items on her desk: the rinsed and upturned Eagles mug, the hockey puck she plays with when she's thinking, sunglasses she may want come morning. Does she have more than one pair? He imagines himself slipping them into his pocket and driving to her place. He sees her surprise and her slightly baffled smile. She might invite him in, might even offer him a beer. They'll sit opposite one another the way they did last time, leaning in so close they'll be breathing each other's breath.

"So what's up?" she'll say and he'll take the sunglasses out of his pocket, passing them to her.

"Thought you might want these," he'll say.

"You drove all the way here just to bring me my sunglasses?" she'll ask and her expression will tell him she thinks he's finally gone crazy.

"It's not that far," he'll say with a shrug because he can't say _I needed an excuse to see you._

And she'll look at him the way she used to; she'll see all the way to the truth. And her face will soften. She'll smile her beautiful smile and she'll say his name. _Walt._ Just that. Then she'll kiss him the way she kissed him once before.

And when it's over, when their eyes are open and their lips are their own again, she'll very gently, very kindly, tell him she's sorry, but her feelings have changed.

And hearing those words from her lovely mouth will make them true.

Walt rubs at his stinging eyes. He tries to catch his breath. Something's knotted and tearing inside him; some vital piece is ripping itself apart. He walks back to his office with his body feeling leaden. As though it's collapsing under the force of its own gravity, as though a small black hole is forming in his chest.

It's a fitting image: the heart as a dying star.

 _Either you give it to her or I will._

He lowers himself heavily into his chair.

Does Vic even want to get married again? Walt realizes he doesn't know. Her divorce is something they've never talked about, not really, just like so many other things. _My rules,_ he thinks with regret. _Not hers._ Nothing between them has been on her terms.

Right there in the center of his desk is the spot where Travis set down a box with an engagement ring inside it. To Walt, the tiny diamond in its setting, just so much compressed carbon, had looked no different than a fragment of crushed glass.

Vic's birthstone is diamond.

How has he ever thought himself worthy of her? He's judged other men in her life as unworthy so easily: Sean, Eamonn, Travis. And yet they've had the courage to declare themselves, to act, while he's spent years so afraid and ashamed of his feelings that he's tried to convince himself he doesn't have them at all.

But there are times when his longing for her feels like the Nile in flood season, bursting its banks and spilling across the plains. There are times when just a glimpse of the arch of her neck as she turns her head or the curve of her hip as she walks past his door will disrupt something deep in his central nervous system. And there are times, there are so many times, when he can't move at all because any motion will be catalytic, will be what propels him to her from any direction, like a compass needle to the north.

 _And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart._

The words _adamant_ and _diamond_ come originally from the Greek _adamas_ , meaning _untameable_ , which in turn comes from _a-_ , meaning _not_ , and _daman_ , meaning _to tame._

Walt reaches out and picks up his drink. The scotch is still rich with color, though the rest of the room seems faded now. He takes the first swallow to feel the warmth and the burn. It spreads down his throat and into his stomach, relieving some of the emptiness there. What he's seeking tonight is not the foggy numbness he'd cocooned himself in after Martha's murder. This time he wants to feel the bite; he wants to be reminded that this suffering is what he's earned.

Even the most delicate diamond is hard enough to cut. Its danger and its beauty are the same.

What was it Vic had told him once? He'd been driving somewhere — they were always driving somewhere — and she'd been next to him with her elbow propped against the door. The sky had been silver that day, Walt remembers, with a low layer of cloud pressing down on the landscape. Sounds had seemed muffled, the way they did when it snowed, and even the morning's brightness had looked somehow flat. They'd traveled in soft light, without shadows, through an unreal and perpetual noon.

The Bronco had been lit up with Vic's laughter as she recounted the story of Omar, disgruntled to discover she was married, telling her that she didn't seem domesticated. As if a wedding ring were some sort of bridle. Walt had glanced over at her sharp grin and her golden glow and thought that no one who really loved her could want to smother that wildness. No one who really loved her could want her tame.

A half-remembered phrase leads him to the bookshelf, where he pulls a thin volume from its place. Its title had appealed to him when he found it sitting in the discount pile at a bookstore in Sheridan last year. _This Clumsy Living_ seemed such an apt description for the way he was stumbling through his days. For several minutes the only sound is the soft susurration of pages turning as he searches for the elusive lines. The poem ends with wolves, that much he knows, so his eyes glide over each page from the bottom up. And there it is, page 68. _The New Math._ Walt reads the whole thing through once, in silence, and then the phrase he'd been thinking of aloud.

"'What we think of as wild I think of as honest. Doing, not what you think, but what you are.'"

Its resonance is absorbed by the room and reflected back, as if the sounds are swallowed and transformed by the wood. Sound transforms the wood and wood transforms the sound in a reciprocal metamorphosis. And isn't that what people do to each other? Isn't that what Vic has done to him?

What she is in essence is honest: so purely and proudly what she is.

 _And what am I?_ he wonders. What is a man who's been doing what he thinks for so long that he no longer knows his own substance?

Walt takes the book with him back to his chair, idly rifling the pages. Little eddies of wind stir around his hands. He picks up his glass and downs the rest of the scotch in a single swallow. Rivulets of heat flow from his belly to trickle outward along his limbs, doing nothing to ease the source of the chill inside him. He feels excoriated and worn thin enough to fray. He yearns for sleep, but the thought of going home to his empty cabin is miserable.

There's nothing of Vic for him there.

At least here in the office she feels closer; he can picture her everywhere. For all the hours he's spent trying not to notice how very beautiful she is, there is so much of her he's memorized. He knows the exact measure of her stride and the sound of her footfalls; he could find her by scent in the dark.

For a while she'd had a photo of the two of them sitting on her desk. It's the only photograph she's ever kept there, before or since. The department had finally bought a new camera and Ferg had been finding excuses to take 'test shots' for days. Walt can't remember how the three of them ended up at the playground in the first place. But he remembers Vic goading and teasing him onto the merry-go-round; the way the wind had whipped her hair around her laughing face as they spun; and how, for those few minutes, he'd been holding on tight to the first happiness he'd felt for a long, long time.

Why the hell had he let it go?

He wants to be part of her happiness and share in it with her, if not as her husband, or lover, then as her friend. And this time he chooses to be better; this time her needs will come first.

He'll learn to do what he is. He'll be honest.

This time he won't fail her again.

* * *

 **notes:** 'the new math' and the anthology 'this clumsy living' are by bob hicok. "And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart" is from Holy Sonnet I by john donne. etymology is from the OED. dialogue from various episodes is strewn about willy-nilly and isn't mine, either. to the best of my knowledge, we never learn when vic's birthday is, so i've decided it's in april because she is absolutely an aries.


	6. and

**A/N:** and here we are: the reason i started this whole endeavour in the first place. thank you for your comments once again.

* * *

Swimming up through a sea of sedatives, he hears her coming from what seems like a long way off.

"Moretti," she says loudly, in that frustrated tone he knows means someone's called her _Mrs Longmire_ again. "Deputy Moretti." She places heavy emphasis on both words.

Walt can't quite seem to feel his face right now but if he could he knows he'd be smiling. He does that a lot these days.

There's a slow, drifting pause, and then he hears Vic again.

"You see this? I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you can't read it, so I'll do that for you. It says Sheriff's Department. So I don't give a fuck if it's outside visiting hours. You either get out of my way right now or I arrest you for obstructing an investigation, throw you in lock-up, and then come back in here and see him anyway."

 _Yep,_ he thinks with pride, at no one in particular. _That's my wife._

Her boots slap against the floor in a sharp rhythm like she's close to running. Walt wants to tell her there's no need to run. It's not like he's going anywhere.

Time lurches through another little bubble burst and pops him out into later.

"Jesus, Walt," Vic breathes. So it must be pretty bad. Her voice is shaky and he wishes he could look at her but his eyelids feel like they've been glued shut. There's a little hitching gasp and then a soft high-pitched sound.

"Don't cry" is what he tries to say, but all that comes out of his throat is a raspy croak.

"Hey," she says, her voice right next to him now. She must be leaning over the bed.

Walt feels the slide of her cold fingers around his hand and manages to squeeze a bit in response.

"Don't try to talk yet," she tells him. "They've only just taken the tube out." Paper rustles; she must be looking at his chart. "You've got a punctured lung, a couple broken ribs, and there was some internal bleeding. No sign of head trauma, but half your face is a fucking mess, babe."

Well, it's not like he was all that pretty to begin with.

Chair legs scrape against the floor and the bed rail rattles as it comes down. There's a slight dip in the mattress near his hip and then he feels the softness of Vic's cheek against the back of his hand.

"I thought we agreed you were gonna stop scaring the shit out of me like this," she says quietly.

Walt manages to stroke one finger along the side of her face in apology. The muscle in her cheek lifts and he knows she's smiling. For a minute or two they stay that way, with her even breaths washing over his wrist, and he floats in warm contentment. Too soon she presses a kiss to his hand and rises with a sigh.

"I need to call Cady. We're gonna flip to see which one of us gets to officially arrest the drunk asshole who hit you."

Scraping chair legs pull Vic away and then the mattress shifts at two points as she braces herself above him on her arms. With a great deal of effort Walt opens his eyes a fraction, but all he can make out is brightness and blur. The blur grows larger and darker, blotting out some of the brightness, as Vic leans in and presses her lips tenderly to his.

He has a soft-focus memory of waking up to a kiss very much like this one what seems like a lifetime ago. When he was too scared and too stubborn to acknowledge how he felt about her, even to himself. When he'd convinced himself he was running towards the truth instead of away from it.

What a damn fool he used to be.

"Just rest, okay?" Vic whispers, laying her brow against his. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Her voice is sweetly narcotic and his resistance dissolves. It feels as if he's seeping into the bed beneath him like a figure in a surrealist painting. His body itself feels abstract, all textures and theory, with no discernible edges. He struggles against the sensation of colour, the undertow of blue. But his mind's gone pulpy and viscid like a bucket of papier mâché; thick and sticky as a vat of melted marshmallows.

In a last hazy pocket of thought, Walt hopes he remembers that simile the next time he wakes up. It'll make Vic laugh when he tells her.

Then she kisses him again, soft and lingering, and he fades into sleep with the warmth of her mouth against his and her fingers carding gently through his hair.

[END]


End file.
